The untold story of Chicago’s pivotal role as a country and folk music capital.
Chicago is revered as a musical breeding ground, having launched major figures like blues legend Muddy Waters, gospel soul icon Mavis Staples, hip-hop firebrand Kanye West, and the jazz-rock band that shares its name with the city. Far less known, however, is the vital role Chicago played in the rise of prewar country music, the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s, and the contemporary offspring of those scenes.
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In Country and Midwestern, veteran journalist Mark Guarino tells the epic century-long story of Chicago’s influence on sounds typically associated with regions further south. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and deep archival research, Guarino tells a forgotten story of music, migration, and the ways that rural culture infiltrated urban communities through the radio, the automobile, and the railroad. The Midwest’s biggest city was the place where rural transplants could reinvent themselves and shape their music for the new commercial possibilities the city offered. Years before Nashville emerged as the commercial and spiritual center of country music, major record labels made Chicago their home and recorded legendary figures like Bill Monroe, The Carter Family, and Gene Autry. The National Barn Dance—broadcast from the city’s South Loop starting in 1924—flourished for two decades as the premier country radio show before the Grand Ole Opry. Guarino chronicles the makeshift niche scenes like “Hillbilly Heaven” in Uptown, where thousands of relocated Southerners created their own hardscrabble honky-tonk subculture, as well as the 1960s rise of the Old Town School of Folk Music, which eventually brought national attention to local luminaries like John Prine and Steve Goodman. The story continues through the end of the twentieth century and into the present day, where artists like Jon Langford, The Handsome Family, and Wilco meld contemporary experimentation with country traditions.
Featuring a foreword from Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Robbie Fulks and casting a cross-genre net that stretches from Bob Dylan to punk rock, Country and Midwestern rediscovers a history as sprawling as the Windy City—celebrating the creative spirit that modernized American folk idioms, the colorful characters who took them into new terrain, and the music itself, which is still kicking down doors even today.
Mark Guarino covers national news and culture from Chicago for the Washington Post, ABC News, the New York Times, and other outlets. He was the Midwest bureau chief for the Christian Science Monitor for seven years. Visit mark-guarino.com for more information.
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Published: University of Chicago Press - April 24th, 2023
The untold story of Chicago’s pivotal role as a country and folk music capital.
Chicago is revered as a musical breeding ground, having launched major figures like blues legend Muddy Waters, gospel soul icon Mavis Staples, hip-hop firebrand Kanye West, and the jazz-rock band that shares its name with the city.
Pre-registering helps us order enough books for our guests and helps us set up the room for safety and comfort. We will allow pre-registrants to be seated first. No one will be turned away, but please note that seating is limited. Please contact the store ahead of time if you need assistance with mobility or other concerns - we are happy to help!
This action- and suspense-packed novel by John Winn Miller introduces Captain Jake Rogers, a hardened smuggler transporting contraband through the U-boat infested waters of the North Atlantic in the beginning phases of World War II. He takes on cargo few other captains would be willing to carry—if the price is right. But after witnessing the oppression of Jews in Amsterdam, Rogers agrees to take on the most dangerous cargo he has ever transported. Pursued by Oberleutnant Viktor Brauer, a brutal U-boat captain, the normally aloof Rogers finds himself drawn in by the family's warmth and faith, and increasingly willing to do whatever it takes to get them to safety.
John Winn Miller's THE HUNT FOR THE PEGGY C, a semifinalist in the Clive Cussler Adventure Writers Competition, captures the breathless suspense of early World War II in the North Atlantic. Captain Jake Rogers, experienced in running his tramp steamer through U-boat-infested waters to transport vital supplies and contraband to the highest bidder, takes on his most dangerous cargo yet after witnessing the oppression of Jews in Amsterdam: a Jewish family fleeing Nazi persecution.
The normally aloof Rogers finds himself drawn in by the family's warmth and faith, but he can't afford to let his guard down when Oberleutnant Viktor Brauer, a brutal U-boat captain, sets his sights on the Peggy C., Rogers finds himself pushed to the limits of his ingenuity as he evades Brauer's relentless stalking, faces a mutiny among his own crew, and grapples with his newfound feelings for Miriam, the young Jewish woman whom, along with her family, he must transport to safety.
When Rogers is seriously wounded, Miriam must prove she is as tough as her rhetoric to save everyone as the U-boat closes in for the kill. THE HUNT FOR THE PEGGY C is a masterpiece laced with nail-biting tension and unexpectedly heartwarming moments that any reader, not just fans of naval fiction, will enjoy.
John Winn Miller is an award-winning investigative reporter, foreign correspondent, editor, newspaper publisher, screenwriter, movie producer, and novelist.
As a reporter at the Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader, Miller was part of a team of reporters that wrote a series that helped trigger educational reform in Kentucky. It won the Society of Professional Journalists’1990 public service award, top honors from Investigative Reporters and Editors, the first $25,000 Selden Ring award, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
He also was a reporter at the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal/Europe; executive editor of the Centre Daily Times in State College, PA, and the Tallahassee (FL) Democrat as well as the publisher at The Olympian in Olympia, WA, and the Concord (NH) Monitor.
In 2012, he was elected to The Associated Press board of directors and selected as a juror for the Pulitzer Prize for the second year in a row.
Miller, a Lexington, KY native, has also produced four films, including Band of Robbers, written and directed by Adam and Aaron Nee (who recently wrote and directed The Lost City). He and his wife, Margo, live in Lexington. Their daughter Allison Miller is an actress-screenwriter-director currently starring in the ABC series A Million Little Things.
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While our store has ramp access to the right of the main entrance, the event space is more easily accessed by entering at Bayly Avenue. Please call the store when you arrive and we will be happy to welcome you via this entrance. This door is next to a loading zone for easy car access, and our parking lot reserved ADA spots are also close to this entrance.
Availability: Coming Soon! Pre-Order this now and we will contact you on publication date!
Published: Bancroft Press - October 23rd, 2023
John Winn Miller's THE HUNT FOR THE PEGGY C, a semifinalist in the Clive Cussler Adventure Writers Competition, captures the breathless suspense of early World War II in the North Atlantic.
Captain Jake Rogers, experienced in running his tramp steamer through U-boat-infested waters to transport vital supplies and contraband to the highest bidder, takes on his most dangerous cargo yet.
Pre-registering helps us order enough books for our guests and helps us set up the room for safety and comfort. We will allow pre-registrants to be seated first. No one will be turned away, but please note that seating is limited. Please contact the store ahead of time if you need assistance with mobility or other concerns - we are happy to help!
Award-winning author Mark Oshiro (Anger is a Gift) returns with a new contemporary coming-of-age novel laced with a twisty, dark mystery you’ll have to read to believe.
KEEP YOUR SECRETS CLOSE TO HOME
It’s been one year since Manny was cast out of his family and driven into the wilderness of the American Southwest. Since then, Manny lives by self-taught rules that keep him moving—and keep him alive. Now, he’s taking a chance on a traveling situation with the Varela family, whose attractive but surly son, Carlos, seems to promise a new future.
Eli abides by the rules of his family, living in a secluded community that raised him to believe his obedience will be rewarded. But an unsettling question slowly eats away at Eli’s once unwavering faith in Reconciliation: Why can’t he remember his past?
But the reported discovery of an unidentified body found in the hills of Idyllwild, California, will draw both of these young men into facing their biggest fears and confronting their own identity—and who they are allowed to be.
For fans of Courtney Summers and Tiffany D. Jackson, Into the Light is a ripped-from-the-headlines story with Oshiro's signature mix of raw emotions and visceral prose—but with a startling twist you’ll have to read to believe.
MARK OSHIRO is the award-winning Latinx queer author of Anger Is a Gift, Each of Us a Desert, as well as their middle grade books The Insiders and You Only Live Once, David Bravo. They are the coauthor (with Rick Riordan) of the upcoming Nico di Angelo adventure book. When not writing, they are trying to pet every dog in the world.
Olivia A. Cole is a writer from Louisville, Kentucky. Her essays have been published by Bitch Media, Real Simple, the Los Angeles Times, HuffPost, Teen Vogue, Gay Mag, and more. She teaches creative writing at Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts, where she guides her students through not only poetry and fiction but also considerations of the world and who they are in it. She is the author of several books for children and adults.
You can get the book on the registration page, but it’s cheaper if you link below because we don’t pay extra service fees. Whatever is more convenient for you, we love to get you your books!
Mobility device access info:
While our store has ramp access to the right of the main entrance, the event space is more easily accessed by entering at Bayly Avenue. Please call the store when you arrive and we will be happy to welcome you via this entrance. This door is next to a loading zone for easy car access, and our parking lot reserved ADA spots are also close to this entrance.
Availability: On Our Shelves in the last 24 hours. Click to see a specific store location's stock.
Published: Labyrinth Road - March 14th, 2023
This searing and intimate novel in verse follows a sixteen-year-old girl coping with sexual abuse as she grapples with how to reclaim her story, her anger, and her body in a world that seems determined to punish her for the sin of surviving.
"This is more than a story about sexual violence—this book is about race, sexuality, love, and how anger can be a catalyst for healing."
Manny was cast out of his family and driven into the wilderness of the American Southwest. Since then, Manny lives by self-taught rules that keep him moving—and keep him alive.
The United States may have a puritanical past, but the 21st century is wide open to diverse gender expression and romance.
Good Sex is the manifesto—or Manisexto, if you will—for this cultural revolution. Same-sex marriage is legal, the #MeToo movement has exploded, colleges nationwide now teach consent-based sexual health, the media celebrates body positivity, and transgender visibility has become mainstream. Defining "good sex" as both ethical and pleasurable, Catherine M. Roach features such topics as equity, intersectionality, and shared pleasure while offering a lively discussion that is inclusively feminist, queer-friendly, and sex-positive without being divisive.
An accessible guidebook, Good Sex provides hope that America's sexual, gender, and racial injustices can be addressed together. After all, this new gender and sexual revolution strengthens the pursuit of happiness and love. Welcome to the revolution!
Catherine M. Roach has 25 years of grant-funded research experience on gender, sexuality, and American popular culture. A two-time Fulbright awardee with a PhD from Harvard and publications in both fiction and nonfiction, she's been an invited visiting professor in Canada, Australia, and Europe. She is Professor of New College, an innovative liberal arts program at the University of Alabama, where she's won the school's top research and teaching awards and where she offers a popular cross-university course titled "Sexuality & Society." Originally from Ottawa, Canada, she is based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Pre-registering helps us order enough books for our guests and helps us set up the room for safety and comfort. We will allow pre-registrants to be seated first. No one will be turned away, but please note that seating is limited. Please contact the store ahead of time if you need assistance with mobility or other concerns - we are happy to help!
Frank Bill is back with a gritty, wrenching novel from deep inside the traumas of a broken American heartland.
Miles is a Vietnam vet who’s worried he’s going to lose his job and his tenuous grasp on a stable life because of a fight he had with a coworker over some steroids. His PTSD and struggles to control his steroid-fueled violent tendencies complicate life with his girlfriend, Shelby, a stripper who only occasionally seems to have the proverbial heart of gold. She certainly seems to possess more kindness and generosity than her brother, Wylie, who’s currently on the run after being implicated in the deaths of two local oxycodone dealers and has their relatives on his tail. When Wylie kidnaps his sister and holes up in Miles's country lair, it is, frankly, threatening to become a bit too much for steroid-addled Miles to handle.
Frank Bill’s world is as wild and rollicking as ever, punctuated with uproarious event after uproarious event. But in Back to the Dirt, he goes deeper than wall-to-wall brawl—with Miles, he takes us back to the experiences overseas that stripped the innocence and optimism from the heartland dream; with Shelby, he shows us that you didn’t have to travel to Vietnam to see real darkness. But still, even in this benighted state, there’s the dirt to come back to. And maybe, just maybe, Bill shows, that can be enough.
Frank Bill is the author of the novel Donnybrook and the story collection Crimes in Southern Indiana, one of GQ's favorite books of 2011 and a Daily Beast best debut of 2011. He lives and writes in Southern Indiana.
Kyle Minor is the author of Praying Drunk, winner of the 2015 Story Prize Spotlight award. His stories and essays appear in Best American Mystery Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, Esquire, The Atlantic, Salon, Iowa Review, Missouri Review, Story, and the New York Times Book Review. His essay collection, How to Disappear and Why, will be published in 2024 by Sarabande Books.
You can get the book on the registration page, but it’s cheaper if you link below because we don’t pay extra service fees. Whatever is more convenient for you, we love to get you your books!
Mobility device access info:
While our store has ramp access to the right of the main entrance, the event space is more easily accessed by entering at Bayly Avenue. Please call the store when you arrive and we will be happy to welcome you via this entrance. This door is next to a loading zone for easy car access, and our parking lot reserved ADA spots are also close to this entrance.
Pre-registering helps us order enough books for our guests and helps us set up the room for safety and comfort. We will allow pre-registrants to be seated first. No one will be turned away, but please note that seating is limited. Please contact the store ahead of time if you need assistance with mobility or other concerns - we are happy to help!
An astrological sign-by-sign guide that predicts 10+ years into the future
Utilize The Power of Divine Timing to manifest the life you desire with Divine timing specific to your life path.
This is The Power of Divine Timing(TM)-the technique that locates your specific, personal Divine blessings and challenges in real time and simply teaches you how to starve your challenges and nurture and grow your blessings
The Power of Divine Timing is a technique that is really quite simple. It is based on astrological data and the divine timing found in the stars.
Anyone can utilize this technique and knowledge to create a happier, more fulfilling life. This technique can be utilized by someone who knows little to nothing about astrology and by the most advanced astrologer. To find out what Divine Season you are in, simply turn to the chapters Nurture the Blessings-Divine Timing Blessing Seasons and Navigate the Challenges-Divine Timing Challenge Seasons and locate the dates of your sun sign and rising sign in each chapter. Be sure to notate when you will experience each divine timing season. This way you can nurture the correct source of energy at the correct time-Now let's get started!
Joy Yascone Elms MA is an astrologist and astrological intuitive that has coached hundreds of clients to success in career, love, marriage, and business, utilizing The Power of Divine Timing™ technique. The Power of Divine Timing™ is a program that aligns you with the divine timing of the Universe to manifest your greatest intentions and desires—all based on astrological timing. After attending graduate school and earning a Master’s in Holistic Health from Georgian Court University — Joy founded the Power of Divine Timing technique through her astrological coaching practice, which was offered at historic and notable Wainwright House in Rye, New York.
You can get the book on the registration page, but it’s cheaper if you link below because we don’t pay extra service fees. Whatever is more convenient for you, we love to get you your books!
Mobility device access info:
While our store has ramp access to the right of the main entrance, the event space is more easily accessed by entering at Bayly Avenue. Please call the store when you arrive and we will be happy to welcome you via this entrance. This door is next to a loading zone for easy car access, and our parking lot reserved ADA spots are also close to this entrance.
Pre-registering helps us order enough books for our guests and helps us set up the room for safety and comfort. We will allow pre-registrants to be seated first. No one will be turned away, but please note that seating is limited. Please contact the store ahead of time if you need assistance with mobility or other concerns - we are happy to help!
THE GLASSMAKER'S WIFE
In August of 1844, a man named Leonard Reed takes violently ill at his home near Heathsville, Illinois, and four days later he is dead. The cause? Arsenic poisoning.
The suspect? His wife, Betsey.
The chief witnesses against her? A hired girl, Eveline Deal, and the local apothecary, James Logan. The evidence? Eveline claims she saw Betsey put a pinch of white powder in Leonard's coffee.
Betsey Reed, a woman who dabbles in herbal healing, is known about town as a witch. As the gossip and the circumstantial evidence mount, Betsey finds herself under the shadow of a trial--and a noose.
A historical crime inspired by the true story of Betsey Reed, for fans of The Trial of Lizzie Borden and The Good Sister, Lee Martin's latest weaves a tale of a pinch of white powder, a scorched paper, a community hungry for a villain, and a young girl's first taste of revenge--but above all, of the contradictions and imperfections of the human heart.
LOST GIRLS
"A dazzling collection of stories that showcases Morris' impressive ability to hide devastating truths within seemingly small moments." -Jenny Offill
Lost Girls explores the experiences of women and girls as they grieve, find love, face uncertainty, take a stand, find their future, and say goodbye to the past. A young woman creates a ritual to celebrate the life of a kidnapped girl, an unmarried woman wanders into a breast feeder's support group and stays, a grieving mother finds solace in an unlikely place, a young girl discovers more than she bargained for when she spies on her neighbors. Though they may seem lost, each finds their center as they confront the challenges and expectations of womanhood.
PRAISE for LOST GIRLS
"The stories in Ellen Birkett Morris's collection, Lost Girls, are memorable for the way they see the lasting truths that reside within the familiar. These stories are full of imaginative leaps that capture the wildness that lies beneath our seemingly ordinary lives. Morris is a writer of extraordinary talent. With elegance and precision, she can turn a story into something luminous and unforgettable." -Lee Martin, author of Pulitzer Prize Finalist The Bright Forever
"Ellen Birkett Morris is a skillful literary pointillist. In Lost Girls, her debut collection, each spare sentence is as considered as a poem; step back a little way, and you behold a world." -David Payne, author of Barefoot to Avalon
"This collection of stunning and original stories kept me turning the pages, eager to meet the daughter who eats the sins of others, the 30-year-old virgin who rents a breast pump, the bereft mother drumming away her grief. Ellen Birkett Morris's Lost Girls draws us so close that before long, we are inhaling the same air, making the same unexpected discoveries, and deeply longing for each of these girls and women to find their private rainbows." -Masha Hamilton, author of 31 Hours and The Camel Bookmobile
About the Author
ELLEN BIRKETT MORRIS is an award-winning writer, teacher and editor based in Louisville, Kentucky. Morris is the author of SURRENDER (Finishing Line Press). Her fiction has appeared in Shenandoah, Antioch Review, Notre Dame Review, and South Carolina Review, among other journals. Her commentaries have been heard on public radio stations across the United States.
Praise For…
“A dazzling collection of stories that showcases Morris' impressive ability to hide devastating truths within seemingly small moments.” —Jenny Offill, author Weather and Department of Speculation
“The stories in Ellen Birkett Morris’s collection, Lost Girls, are memorable for the way they see the lasting truths that reside within the familiar. These stories are full of imaginative leaps that capture the wildness that lies beneath our seemingly ordinary lives. Morris is a writer of extraordinary talent. With elegance and precision, she can turn a story into something luminous and unforgettable.” —Lee Martin, author of Pulitzer Prize Finalist The Bright Forever
"Ellen Birkett Morris is a skillful literary pointillist. In Lost Girls, her debut collection, each spare sentence is as considered as a poem; step back a little way, and you behold a world." —David Payne, author of Barefoot to Avalon
“This collection of stunning and original stories kept me turning the pages, eager to meet the daughter who eats the sins of others, the 30-year-old virgin who rents a breast pump, the bereft mother drumming away her grief. Ellen Birkett Morris’s Lost Girls draws us so close that before long, we are inhaling the same air, making the same unexpected discoveries, and deeply longing for each of these girls and women to find their private rainbows.” —Masha Hamilton, author of 31 Hours and The Camel Bookmobile
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You can get the books on the registration page, but it’s cheaper if you link below because we don’t pay extra service fees. Whatever is more convenient for you, we love to get you your books!
Mobility device access info:
While our store has ramp access to the right of the main entrance, the event space is more easily accessed by entering at Bayly Avenue. Please call the store when you arrive and we will be happy to welcome you via this entrance. This door is next to a loading zone for easy car access, and our parking lot reserved ADA spots are also close to this entrance.
Availability: On Our Shelves in the last 24 hours. Click to see a specific store location's stock.
Published: Dzanc Books - December 6th, 2022
In August of 1844, a man named Leonard Reed takes violently ill at his home near Heathsville, Illinois, and four days later he is dead. The cause? Arsenic poisoning.
